I spoke to my doctor last Wednesday about my plans to try and get fit by doing Marathon training, while also complaining to him how I have been coming down with one cold after another, how my neuralgia is not going, and how I’m still utterly exhausted all the time. I said I am too young to feel this old.

And he said you’re not feeling old, you’re feeling the illness that you are refusing to accept that you have.

I asked him to shoot me, but he said they don’t do that on the NHS 😦

I said I would try and do the training for someone planning to walk the marathon, and he said that that would be a good idea as long as I halved the weekly training and doubled the time allowed until I started to feel la lot better (Luckily I didn’t tell him I was secretly wondering if I should aim for sub 4 hours)

He said that the worst thing about chronic fatigue is getting the balance right… training enough to be of value, but not too much as to spend a week recovering… and then keeping it going week after week when progress seems so slow & even backwards. It’s certainly backwards at the moment, this new cold seems to be getting worse… sore throat, headaches, cough again….

Seriously, they shoot horses don’t they?

We are off on holiday tomorrow for 2 weeks, hoping to be lovely and warm on the Red Sea in Egypt! I expect to come back utterly rested and revived. I don’t think I’ll get to blog my progress as I doubt the WiFi is super, but there will be hundreds of photos on my return 🙂 back in 2/3 weeks!

So progress so far:

0 miles, 0 hours training, days of taking Wilson for dog walks 🙂 (Not very long or difficult, but at least outdoors!)

Food Diary progress.

Writing it down at least. My eating has been dreadful. Fuelled by feeling horrid due to illness & not wanting to eat as I feel sick, plus knowing that I am not getting any exercise, plus poor self esteem due to being ill for so long my food intake has been terrible. As I said, at least I have been writing it down. I hadn’t even been eating fruit this week. My appetite had completely gone but finally on Friday I started eating normally again, and managed to wolf down two full sized portions of Melanzane Parmigiana (baked aubergine) that I made from scratch! Very impressed! I can’t believe I never tried to make this before, although it is a bit messy as you have to fry lots of aubergine, it’s a simple recipe and tastes scrumptious! Followed massive dinner with sweets, chocolate, half a melon & then some Ben & Jerry’s Fish Food Ice cream!

I must be getting better 🙂

My target for next week:

Exercise daily on the sun lounger 🙂

Explore a little

Read a lot!

Continue to eat properly (we are getting half board, and not having to cook is half the battle)

See you in 2/3 weeks 🙂

Wilson on our sofa

PS Wilson is not coming….. he’s with his pet-minder. I’m not sure who is more upset, Wilson or Peter

8 Responses to From Sofa to Marathon – Week 3

Wow! Marathon training! I would say “good for you,” but having done exactly one marathon, I would never, ever advise anyone to do it. Not that you shouldn’t. I just found the experience to be ultimately less rewarding than I’d hoped.

I remember asking my doctor if they did shotguns on the NHS. The problem with CFS is that if you fall off the stepladder of life from four steps up, you need to begin all over again from stage one – a step at a time. It took me a long time to learn that. Now I know it is actually easier to listen to my body and not over do things in the first place. Now relax and enjoy the holiday.

PS: No need to send a postcard, but an envelope full of warm sunshine would be muchly appreciated!

I hope you are having a lovely time. I find it strange that people go somewhere like Egypt for 2 weeks, it would part of grand tour for us. I really hope you will listen to your doctor, don’t overdo it.

I can imagine. We have quite a few relatives & friends living in Australia & New Zealand, but like you, would not want to go for just 2 weeks! In 2 weeks we would just about recover from the outward journey!

Our longest flight for 2 weeks was to India, and I think if we went again we would try for longer. The only advantage of flying in that direction is you get the jet-lag on holiday, so you sleep it off on sun loungers so don’t really notice it. On the way back we try to leave after mid day so after an 11 hour flight we arrive early evening and then can have a good long night’s sleep to recover

Completely rested in Egypt, but not better which is why I haven’t posted here since I got back yet. Will try soon!

So I’m not the only one who’s having trouble getting ready for a marathon? I wanted to run one last year, and go side-tracked and didn’t train well enough in the end. I find that SuperBetter and Fitocracy can help a lot with keeping track of training and networking with people who share your health goals. The first is especially nice to use since it also helps find a better balance in life. I use it all the time.

On another note, I nominated your blog for an award! No pressure, you don’t have to do anything about it if you don’t want to, but here it goes!